Here's another novel rooted in the Arkham Horror gaming milieu of pulp-era Yog-Sothothery. The prose is not always good. In fact, it can be pretty awful: "He hefted the heavy shotgun onto his shoulder. Pausing to turn the light off, he cursed once and left it. Better to light a candle, as they say" (301). The book is littered with eggcorns and misplaced apostrophes. But author Alan Bligh cultivates some fine moral ambivalence in his characters, and his story is genuinely intriguing and scary. I read the closing arc of the book with real excitement, and found the ending satisfying.

Like fellow Arkham Horror novelist Graham McNeill, Bligh divides his action among locations in Arkham, New York City, and Kingsport, and both authors deploy the terrible old man of H.P. Lovecraft's eponymous tale as a character in the last location. Of the two, I found Bligh's old man to be more engaging and better woven into the fabric of the story.

Although there seemed to be a lot of different plots at the outset (partly resulting from a demand of the gaming novel genre, to involve multiple identifiable protagonists from the games), Bligh succeeded in pulling them together for a single coherent crisis with its resolution shrouded in mystery. Although it's by a different author, I've already started reading its sequel in "The Lord of Nightmares Trilogy": The Lies of Solace.

Please see my review of Ghouls of the Miskatonic for the context of fiction based on the role playing game Arkham Horror by Fantasy Flight Games.

Ghouls of the Miskatonic was a serviceable novelization of Arkham Horror game play. It was diverting without being memorable at all. Dance of the Damned is so much better than that. Alan Bligh has a good deal of experience writing scenarios for role playing games, and perhaps has written a few short stories, although I have never encountered him before; this is his first novel. Well he has done himself proud. Dance of the Damned transcends the source material and ends up being a corking good read in its on right.

Some housekeeping: like all of the Fantasy Flight Game novelizations, this is a mass market trade paperback, currently listed for $8.99 (I recollect when I was a kid and such books were less than a dollar, while now this price seems pretty reasonable...but I digress). The excellent cover art is by FFG's resident creative genius, Anders Finer. The text runs from page 7 to 329. A brief note but informative about the author is provided; they should do the same for the artist. Editing was tight; I don't recollect any typos.

Daisy Walker (an investigator from the rpg) works as a librarian and investigator at the Orne Library of Miskatonic University, although she seems so much more competent than that (why only becomes clear much later). She is contacted by a friend for her student days in Kingsport, a very worldly and somewhat wealthy Annabel Fawn. Annabel is in trouble; her boyfriend has vanished under mysterious circumstances and has left her with a very small but very potent artifact. Annabel needs a confidant and somewhere to lay low, and comes to Daisy for help in Arkham. In the meantime, tough PI Tony Morgan (another stalwart from the rpg) has just been involved in a rather bloody showdown and ends up in the employ of Mr. Shawcross, a shadowy power broker from Copperhead Industries. Mr. Shawcross makes Tony an offer he can't refuse, basically to track down Maxwell Cormac. It turns out Cormac is Annabel's boyfriend and he has taken something of great interest to Shawcross. You can see how the plot threads intersect. Several groups are trying to get Annabel's artifact, as Daisy struggles to make sense of everything including her own damaged memory, while Tony is hot on their trail. It rapidly becomes clear that powers beyond normal are being exercised (or are exercising their influence on our plane), and relief of human suffering is not one of their primary aims. The plot moves along propulsively, converging in escalating violence in a series of encounters in Kingsport.

I very much liked this book. The prose was crisp, the characters came alive and the dialogue was quite well written. I never thought I was reading a scenario from a rpg; the book worked well as a novel. I found it hard to believe Mr. Bligh is a novice at this. I particularly liked the vivid physical descriptions of Kingsport. The major action sequences were appropriately horrific. The cliff hanger ending (this is a trilogy after all) did leave me wanting more.

There are some things I didn't particularly like, although they did not put me off. For example, the Terrible Old Man of Kingsport puts in a few appearances as some sort of mysterious wizard of unclear motivation or allegiance. I could have lived without that; I guess it was added to connect the reader to HPL's Kingsport.

My bottom line is I am happy to recommend this to fans of Cthulhu mythos fiction in general, not just fans of Arkham Horror. I am looking forward to future Cthulhu mythos works by Mr. Bligh, not just the next two books in the Lord of Nightmares trilogy. This is a book I would like to get in a larger limited edition format, heavily illustrated by Mr. Finer. ( )